This is a blog that I started in october 2010, mainly for discussing my ideas on the economy, taxation and politics. Please add comments - I'll do my best to reply. If you are new, I would recommend watching one of my YouTube presentations (in French or English). You can download a fully indexed pdf version (over 600 pages) here.

7 Oct 2012

Following on from yesterdays post showing that in the 23 countries covered by the B.I.S. dataset managed well over $9 quadrillion in transactions last year, I've compiled the figures for the 5 countries in the Eurozone that are included.

The winner is Germany, with a very respectable total of nearly €751 trillion - up 6% on 2010, and nearly beating the record of €753 trillion in 2007.

Next comes Belgium, which saw a record-breaking total of nearly €367 trillion - up a very impressive 12.5% on 2010 - thanks in large part to the fact that the EuroClear Bank is based in Belgium. And since EuroClear Bank managed nearly €333 trillion on its own....

France came third with a total of close on €293 trillion - 9% up on the previous year, but substantially below the record sum of €358 trillion in 2007. Not bad though.
As everyone knows, Italy is in crisis. And their total of €190 trillion is actually 1% down on 2010. But it's still nearly a record for them.

Finally, we have the Netherlands, which manage to break all previous records with a total of nearly €95 trillion - up more than 2% on 2010.

The chart for the Netherlands also includes the total figure for all 5 countries, which at over €1.7 quadrillion is over 8.5% up on the previous year.

These are pretty impressive numbers, especially when you consider that they only cover 5 of the 23 Eurozone countries. I suspect that Luxembourg would manage some pretty eye-watering numbers too, based on the numbers from the European Central Bank. So much for the theory that there is no money in the Eurozone. There must be plenty if just five countries can generate €1,704,990,000,000,000 in transactions in a single year.

And it only goes to demonstrate that if the Eurozone countries led by France and Germany actually get a Financial Transaction Tax introduced, the tax's potential for generating revenue is truly impressive. Specfically, a 0.1% FTT on that lot would generate up to €1.7 trillion. What are we waiting for?

Sure, a 0.1% tax would no doubt result in a drop in the total level of transactions. So what? Are those transactions doing anything useful? Or are they pointless and parasitic? I think you can probably guess what I think....